


Zealous

by Deus_Ignea



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Inspired by Roleplay/Roleplay Adaptation, My First Fanfic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deus_Ignea/pseuds/Deus_Ignea
Summary: The matriarch of a race of alien angels. The last of a dying breed of assassins.Only at the brink of the extinction of everything do their paths cross.And only then is what would have been made known...
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character





	Zealous

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there!
> 
> So with this being the first published fanfiction on this account, I wanted to try a unique formatting style.  
>  This was my thought process behind the approach:
> 
>  _All works are adaptations of roleplays I have participated in._  
>  _They have been pre-created in Google Docs with the following format:_
> 
> _Paper size is Letter spec (8.5" wide x 11" long) in Portrait orientation, with left-right margins of 1" each.  
>  All text is of Verdana font, size 10._
> 
> _Left-aligned paragraphs represent paraphrased posts that I've sent in an RP._  
>  _Right-aligned paragraphs represent paraphrased posts that my partner has sent in an RP._  
>  _Center-aligned paragraphs represent additional posts to tie in between to make the story more fluid and seamless._
> 
> _It is recommended to view these works on a browser--with the default site/work skins, and a screen resolution of at least 1600x900--for the full experience._
> 
> I might stick with this theme for future stories, or this might be a one-off and I write future fics regularly like a normal writer, idk.
> 
> Either way, I hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ancient talisman, hidden deep within a temple of white and gold.  
> An unspoken decree, dictating the servitude of all who are born into it.  
> Her name? She doesn't have one, other than her designation: Voss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **From the Author:**  
>  A nasty case of writer’s block, on top of an especially hefty batch of real-world stuff, forced me to update this chapter in segments rather than upload the whole thing at once (which should have been 5/12/2020 @ UTC -8).  
>  Expect this to not happen again, as I will be working on chapters in full before posting them.

**??? - 3rd - ???**

It was a relatively peaceful afternoon for the denizens of the Aemen Tower, on the Ninth Sun  
of the Sixth Astral Moon.

How they knew it was afternoon, despite the Tower itself having no windows or doors  
leading to the outside world, no one truly knows. Many have speculated that the Aemen  
themselves have an almost supernatural understanding of their bodies (mainly their internal  
clocks), while others have rumored it to be the Tower’s vast array of mystical properties that  
directly influence the Aemen. The latter of the two theories appears to be the case more  
often than not, as with most events in direct correlation to the gilded megastructure.

The Aemen Tower is an intricately designed obelisk of white primaries, black secondaries,  
and gold accents. With geometrically-shaped gaps lining the winding pillars riding up the  
sides, a hollow half-spherical base with a cross-shaped gap splitting the retrusion into four  
equivalent segments, and an apex of twin curved horns spiraling upwards around each  
other, the structure caps out at an unfathomable 810-story height of 26,614 feet. What’s  
even more incredible is the fact that the entire Tower appears to float uninhibited through a  
dark purple void dotted with blue and green stars, rotating itself every which way and still  
keeping a nominal flow of gravity inside the structure itself. These rotations appear to give  
the illusion of night and day that keeps the Tower’s activity regulated every day, or “cycle”  
as the Aemen call it.

Labyrinths of white and gold, thin pillars and high ceilings, and grand arches and wide open  
spaces make up roughly 99% of the inside of the Aemen Tower. 8 Districts of 100 stories  
each--2 Residential areas, a Coliseum, a Restaurant, a Market, a Library, a Garden, and an  
Observatory--are separated into 4 and 4 by a smaller but far more integral 10 floors. This is  
where the Ritual District is located: a massive cylindrical space taking up all 10 stories, with  
only a circular catwalk denoting the ceilings/floors of each story. In its center lay a caterina  
fountain of pure gold spanning a quarter of the surface area of the base floor, with spouts of  
sky blue water shooting halfway up the open space before raining back down into the pool  
at the base of the fountain.

The dwellers of the Tower, the Aemen, are a breed of young girls that perpetually appear to  
be of teen age. Being a female-exclusive people, they are most often seen stark naked,  
save for any accessories that do little to cover their pale forms.

A majority of one’s cyclical routine within the Tower would likely consist of walking to and  
from location to location, performing their designated tasks for the cycle in each, before  
returning to their quarters for the night. This process repeats itself indefinitely until either  
their passing or “The Rise”: an event of almost biblical proportions wherein all Aemen  
sacrifice themselves to resurrect "a goddess from the old ages, who will then unite all  
worlds under a paradise of her sole design."

While the Aemen are a peaceful people, primarily because they have never known anything  
else apart from life within the Tower, they don’t take kindly to intruders--however rare they  
may be--often executing them without trial or prejudice. Those who would dare to fight  
back against the Aemen discover that they are powerful combatants, trained in many forms  
of martial arts, both unarmed and armed with various weaponry.

It is almost impossible to withstand the onslaught of even a single Aemen, due in part to  
their immense speed and agility. Their reflexes are also unable to be perceived by even the  
most advanced of surveillance technology: sometimes their own tech fails to keep up with  
them!

And why do they train themselves in these arts so diligently and brutally, every single cycle?  
To protect the Aemen Talisman: a blood red, teardrop-shaped gemstone embedded in a  
black stone tablet. Elaborate braids wrapping around the smooth surfaces of the stone, the  
Talisman is embedded halfway into the side of the central spout of the ritual fountain. No  
one, not even the purest and most worthy of Aemen themselves, are allowed to touch the  
divine artifact, for it is said that should anything taint its gem’s surface, the goddess will no  
longer have the power needed to bring forth her paradise. Ever.

Despite all the fervor of their alien religion, the Aemen live their lives in overly luxurious  
comfort, and are perfectly content with the truth that everything they’ve ever known is soon  
to be erased with the coming of their goddess. Perhaps it’s because they take solace in the  
fact that they know that she will be doing the worlds a favor by remaking them into a  
utopian nexus.

In any case, it’s no surprise that, like all civilizations, there exists infighting among the  
many social groups of Aemen. Whether it be playful banter, civil debate, or insurgent  
uprising, every individual Aemen has a distinct personality to compliment the way they view  
themselves, their peers, and the ways of the Tower.

This is the story of one particularly antisocial Aemen...

* * *

An ancient talisman, hidden deep within a temple of white and gold.

The Dells told her all about that sacred artifact when she became a candidate for the Order  
of Inquisitors. She didn’t remember much of their teachings...or much of anything, really.  
She kept mostly to herself, for what reasons even she didn’t know. Was it the fact that she  
at least vaguely understood she had a time limit, like everyone else in the Tower? That  
everything they’d worked so tirelessly to maintain would all amount to next to nothing,  
come time for The Rise?

An unspoken decree, dictating the servitude of all who are born into it.

She was obedient in nearly every psychological aspect. Like all Aemen, she didn’t question  
her superiors, nor did the thought to do so cross her mind, and she didn’t attempt to start  
or end fights unless she was explicitly told to. It was almost as if her body and mind were  
two separate pieces, rather than one cohesive being. Why? She didn’t know.

Her name? She doesn’t have one, other than her designation: Voss.

That was the only thing she was ever identified as. This was yet another of the things she  
didn’t question, but again, she didn’t know why. Why she was chosen to become an  
Inquisitor, why she was paired with what may as well have been the most insufferably  
annoying neighbor, and why she was almost always forced to fight solo, exams or otherwise.  
All these questions, and practically no answers to any of them.

...well, except for two.

She could chalk up one of the “whys” to the obvious fact that her stats were higher than  
any Aemen’s recorded in the history of their existence, namely her stamina and endurance.  
It was almost universally known that she won every single match she has ever been put in.  
She even held her own against four elite Inquisitors for two consecutive hours! No one has  
ever done that!

The other “why” was less obvious, but still well known. Her neighbor was a really sweet girl,  
that much she knew. But at times she could be a little slow, and no amount of berating  
would change her ways. And to be frank, Voss didn’t want it any other way. Maybe it was  
the fact that the way she thinks was the best part of her personality. Her charm, in a sense.

Or maybe it’s because of the nickname she was given by her...

“Rise and shine, V~!” came the upbeat voice of an Aemen, designated Ii’sg, muffled by the  
closed door of her best friend’s bedroom. The young woman’s forest-green bob cut, swaying  
from side to side with each motion of her bare knuckles against the polished hardwood  
before her, framed the soft features of her unmistakably feminine face perfectly, yet  
bringing almost all attention to her hazel pupils at the same time.

“Imperial wants us to be extra early for our physicals today. Any idea what Alga-dell’s planning?”

**Ii'sg - 3rd - Voss**

“No.” Voss spoke in a low whisper, laying motionless across her bed, limbs splayed out in all  
directions. She couldn’t be bothered to get up, not unless a higher-up told her to.

“Hey, you alright in there?” Ii’sg knocked on the door a few more times, worry apparent in  
her voice. “I know you don’t like to talk a lot, but you’ve been extra quiet lately and...”

Her words trailing off, she fell silent for a few seconds before speaking up again, much more  
quietly.

“I don’t know, I just-...I worry about you...”

That did it.

Almost mechanically, Voss rose up from the admittedly rather cozy surface of her bed, legs  
swinging over the edge of the mattress lazily. She pushed herself off, and the second her  
feet were firmly planted on the tiled ground below her, she turned and walked towards the  
door leading out into the rest of the Tower, her movements seamless and fluid, easily  
comparable to that of a robot.

Her deathly pale skin, coupled with her perfectly straight dark red hair and featureless  
scarlet pupils, only seemed to reinforce the idea that she may as well have been a lifeless  
machine amongst the rest of her openly expressive peers.

The muffled sound of footsteps against tile clued Ii’sg in on the only thing she needed to  
know, and she finally allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.

As the door slowly swung open with a resounding creak, however, her worries returned in  
full force as her eyes lingered on Voss’ disheveled bedhead, somehow looking more  
unkempt than usual today.

“Do you want to talk about...y’know, stuff?” She shrugged, hoping to strike up   
conversation with the reclusive girl, but was met with the usual dreaded response of...

“No.” Voss replied listlessly, walking right past her neighbor and straight to the Aemen  
Academy, smack-dab in the center of the Coliseum District.

“Oh...ok...”

She couldn’t bring herself to tell her closest (or rather only) friend of her worries then and  
there, for even she didn’t understand them.

Ii’sg said physicals were today, right? Maybe fighting would help clear her mind of these  
impurities.

But at this point in her life, one could only hope...

* * *

“Alright, skanks! Listen up!” shouted a thin, honeyed voice from the center of the auxiliary  
auditorium.

The Dell in charge of this cycle’s physical assessments was a petite, fair-skinned girl named  
Alga. She had slightly inward-tilting eyes, with irises of bright yellow and thin slits for  
pupils. Her hair was a pale, dirty ash-blonde styled into a shaggy pixie cut, numerous wild  
strands sticking out at downward angles from the back of her head.

As the second-in-command of the Order of Inquisitors, Alga could most often be seen with a  
prideful smirk plastered across her face, the corners of her lips tugging higher up along her  
cheeks almost to a comical degree whenever she spoke. Today was no exception to this, as  
she stated she would be “personally testing” the top combatants of the Moon.

“Wow...I never noticed how much she likes to hear herself talk.” Ii’sg whispered lowly to  
herself, voice shaky from the slight fear that if she were a fraction of a decibel louder, she’d  
be scolded to no end, by both her best friend and her superiors.

She didn’t want that. Especially the first one.

“She is our subcommander for many a reason. If she wishes to do so until she’s blue in the  
face, it’s not our place to question or stop her.” Voss replied from next to the usually bubbly  
girl, voice toneless and almost outright inaudible, even taking into account the otherwise  
suffocating silence of the coliseum-like interior of the training grounds.

“And so, we’re going to gauge your abilities for the remainder of the Moon by pitting you  
against the Order’s best for every single fight from here on. Today, I’ll be your opponent!”

A collective sigh of exasperation with hints of surprise and dread echoed across the crowd of  
mostly naked girls. At least, the ones who haven’t already graduated.

And Voss, of course.

“Ugh, why can’t we have Aoa-dell today? She was way more chillaxed with the whole  
‘seeing inside yourself’ thing...” Ii’sg groaned, no longer caring if everyone in the large room  
heard her. She needed to make her piece known.

And she immediately regretted it when a black barbed whip struck across the side of her  
exposed stomach, eliciting a sudden cry of anguish from the young girl.

“Speak only when spoken to, knave!” She could barely make out the gravelly voice of a  
less-than-desirable teacher--Sqizo-dell, a hulk of a woman with heavily scarred bronze  
skin--as she roughly dropped to the ground on her knees, clutching her sides and coughing  
up a few drops of blood onto the floor, a tear following suit as it fell from her reddening  
cheek. She hated when anything remotely sharp dug into her sensitive skin like that.

Voss’ eyes widened almost imperceptibly fast, floored that her best friend would do  
something so ridiculously stupid, but just as shocked (if not more so) that such a harsh  
punishment was resorted to so quickly.

The look of irascible bewilderment Aoa--a mature and gentle one with dark silver hair and  
eyes--gave Sqizo as the latter Dell retracted the whip into her white-gold, spike-knuckled  
gauntlet with the flick of a wrist quickly quelled Voss’ worries that they were going to go  
farther in reprimanding Ii’sg.

Even so, she couldn’t ignore the fact that, while her entire body tensed as if she felt her  
colleague’s pain in that moment, a droplet of an unmistakable wetness started dripping  
down her thigh.

She was aroused by the sight of her friend’s excruciating pain. How could she _not_ feel  
disgusted with herself right now?!

Despite both the unforeseen interruption and the awkward silence that followed, Alga  
continued on, now moving to recite a speech she knew by heart of how beautiful the world  
was going to be after their passing.

“55 cycles...until the Rise of our master...” she drawled, voice husky and eyes half-lidded.  
She would’ve started furiously fingering herself then and there, if it weren’t for the class  
that she had promised to teach today.

No one could ignore that her thighs were absolutely dripping now. Of course, she herself did  
as she proceeded with selecting the first student to be “tested” by her. Her eyes scanned  
the room erratically, and only the keenest of minds could decipher why: she was eager to  
dominate a bitch.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of searching, she found her first victim...

“Voss.” Alga spoke in a low, venomous whisper.

As soon as her name was mentioned, Voss’ eyes focused like a laser ahead of her, and she  
turned to face her teacher for the cycle, waiting for a few seconds before beginning to walk  
to the center of the arena, the only clue that there was an out-of-bounds being the ring  
of Aemen surrounding the two.

**Alga - 3rd - Voss**

The two combatants stood 15 yards apart from each other, breaths slow and bodies poised.

“Ready.” Alga relayed her status with a confident, almost sadistic smirk, cracking her  
knuckles as she got into her battle stance.

“Ready.” Voss did the same, emotionless, as she simply stood there.

Outside of the ring, she and Alga-dell were a diligent student following the word of their  
teacher down to the letter. But right here and now, they were opponents--enemies--and  
neither herself nor the other would hold anything back.

She knew this. She lived it every single day. And she would continue to...-

“Fighters ready?” Sqizo spoke up, and without waiting for any sign of an answer, she  
shouted, “Fight!”

* * *

Immediately after the start of the battle had been announced, Alga dashed towards her  
opponent. A few black magic missiles shot backwards from the palm of her hand accelerated  
her even more as she prepared her first attack.

Voss, however, just stood, calm and collected as she analyzed the situation. Her gaze flitted  
from one part of Alga’s body to the other in rapid succession, taking note of the twitch of an  
eye here and the tensing of a muscle there.

With a fierce battle cry, Alga jumped high into the air, diving back down with her leg  
outstretched and engulfed in golden fire.

She didn’t count on her divekick to connect, much less even make contact. But this didn’t  
mean she wasn’t prepared for what came next.

At the last second, Voss had tilted her head to the side, just narrowly avoiding the flames  
that were shot forth from the heel of her attacker. As an extra precaution, she sidestepped  
half a foot to her right, making the attack miss altogether.

Suddenly, she felt a pressure on the small of her back, as Alga curled her leg to press into  
Voss’ body. Using her like a springboard, Alga jumped forward into a dive roll, kicking her  
opponent up and away in the same motion.

Somersaulting and sliding backwards with her feet planted behind her, the second Alga  
came to a complete stop, she burst forward again, not giving her student a moment to rest  
as she was already on the attack again.

Struggling to reorient herself mid-air, Voss could only bring her arms up instinctively to  
guard the next strike that came at her.

Or rather, multiple strikes.

Curling her fingers into a claw, Alga threw her arm perpendicular to her torso, launching  
flaming bolts from her fingertips in the motion. Clenching her fist, she then laced the  
lingering embers around her hand for a a feint of a backhand strike.

Failing to anticipate the pseudo smoke screen effect the explosive flames would emit upon  
contact with her rather weak guard, Voss continued to blindly block her front, leaving  
herself wide open for her teacher to drive her shin into the side of her neck with force that  
could shatter bone like glass.

If it weren’t for her superhuman physiology as an Aemen, she would be dead long before  
she hit the ground. Instead, she was paralyzed from the neck down for a moment and flung  
outside the bounds of the makeshift ring, slamming face-first into a particularly battered  
section of the circular concrete wall of the coliseum’s arena.

 _They didn’t even bother patching that up,_ she noted absentmindedly.

* * *

<[To Be Continued]/|\|/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Timeframe:**  
>  55 cycles before The Rise (the Aemen use a calendar system exactly like the Eorzean Calendar in Final Fantasy XIV)
> 
>  **Translations:**  
>  Dell - teacher (often used like the Japanese honorific -sensei)
> 
>  **Elements:**  
>  Think of the Orokin Tower from Warframe. That's a rough estimate of the interior of the Aemen Tower.  
>  The void it floats in is an amalgamation of the backdrop of Warframe's Void and the skybox of Minecraft's End.
> 
>  **From the Author:**  
>  If it wasn’t clear before, this is my first attempt at a written fight scene.  
>  All the movements, attacks, and other choreography have been elaborated in my mind, but formulating paragraphs that depict them accurately is where I personally feel it is a struggle, which is why this one is so incredibly short.  
>  As such, if you have any suggestions for improvements, or other feedback in general, I’m all ears (or rather, eyes, since I’m reading them...).
> 
> Review away, and stay tuned for the next chapter!


End file.
